Firefight as Wood rescued

A military rescue operation frees Australian Douglas Wood from his kidnappers in Iraq.

Mr Wood was freed in a dramatic rescue by Iraqi military forces acting with American support.

Brigadier General Jaleel Khalaf Shewi, commander of the Iraqi brigade which rescued Mr Wood, said a brief firefight had taken place during the operation.

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Shewi said his troops had learned of "suspect activity" in a Baghdad house and carried out a cordon and search operation.

Once inside, they heard English being spoken and discovered Wood under a blanket with his hands bound.

Asking who the man was, they were told by those holding him: "This is our father, he is sick".

The general said soldiers took up combat positions and a brief firefight with insurgents on a rooftop followed, but no casualties were suffered on either side.

The militants were taken "completely by surprise", he said.

Soldiers 'stumbled' across Wood

US military officers said the Iraqi soldiers had effectively "stumbled across Wood" during a "routine" raid on a suspected insurgent weapons cache.

"Iraqi soldiers ... discovered Wood and an Iraqi hostage in the northwest Baghdad neighborhood of Al-Adel while conducting a planned cordon-and-search operation for a weapons cache," said a statement.

Three people were arrested during the operation, which also resulted in the release of an Iraqi hostage.

Mr Wood appeared to be well and in good spirits when he was filmed by a TV crew at the end of his ordeal.

Laughing, and in apparent good health, Mr Wood told a CNN news crew he had been surprised and "a bit scared" by the gun fight that broke out when several Iraqis in the house where he was being held tried to stop a search by Iraqi soldiers.

"The first thing is there was a bit of shooting outside, then they came and covered me over with a blanket.

"And then there was still a lot of yelling and screaming. And then a gun, they actually fired inside the room.

"That was a bit scary."

He described his treatment by his captors as being "pretty fair" although he says he was kicked in the head soon after being captured.

He said he had been fed on bread and water throughout his captivity.

We have your Mr Douglas Wood

News of his rescue was broken in a phone call to a senior Australian diplomat in Baghdad, Nick Warner, about 10.45am local time (4.45pm Melbourne time) yesterday.

"We have your Mr Douglas Wood," said a man Mr Warner understood to be a member of the Iraqi military.

Mr Warner, the official in charge of the special task force working to free Mr Wood, was cautious. "Oh yeah?" he responded. "So put him on the phone."

As the exhausted and emotional Mr Wood came onto the line, Mr Warner asked him to prove his identity by stating the name of his family's dog when he lived in Geelong.

"Dog?," replied Mr Wood. "We had cats. Oh the dog - Monty!" he said.

The Australian camp erupted and headed off to pick up the man they had feared they would never see alive.

A source told The Age last night that when Mr Wood first saw the Australian task force he asked them: "Any chance of a VB?" and "How are the Cats going?"

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said a "crucial intelligence tip-off" had led troops directly to the house where the Australian was found concealed under a blanket, with his hands bound.

However, British war zone specialist Tony Loughran said the operation could have gone horribly wrong.

"You know, the information that was coming forward could have been faulty, they could have been misled and actually brought into a booby-trapped house or whatever," he told the Seven network.

Prime Minister John Howard paid tribute to the efforts of Australia's Muslim community and the senior cleric Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, who flew to Iraq to negotiate Mr Wood's release.

"We are overwhelmed with relief," he said. "Nothing compared, of course, with the relief his family must now feel."

Friends and family

Mr Wood's family issued a statement saying it was delighted that he had been released. "It has been a horrifying ordeal for him. The family is greatly relieved.

The Wood family's nightmare began when it was told that in a statement broadcast on the al-Jazeera Arabic television network shortly after 2am Melbourne tim) on April 30, a group calling itself the Shura Council of the Mujahideen in Iraq announced that it was holding the Australian-born engineer. The group set a 72-hour deadline for the withdrawal of Australian troops from the country.

On a DVD recording, Mr Wood was heard saying he would be killed if the troops were not pulled out of Iraq. Mr Downer said he thought Mr Wood would want to return to his home in the US but he said there had been some speculation that he might want to come to Australia.

Mr Downer said no ransom was paid.

"The Wood family, at some stage, said they would be prepared to make a contribution to an Iraqi charity ... if Douglas was released but that didn't come to anything," he said.

Mr Downer said hostage-takers in Iraq were often criminals trying to gain large sums of money.

The two Iraqis detained after Mr Wood's release were being questioned about other kidnappings, he said.

"I think that a lot of the hostage taking in Iraq is being done by criminals, not by people with political, or for that matter religious, motives.

David Edge and Jim Fidge, school friends from Mr Wood's home town, Geelong, said they were not surprised a VB was among the first things on their friend's mind.